I was very disturbed by Jimmy Kimmel’s ‘Kids Table’ show. It was aired on ABC recently and talked about killing all the Chinese so that the states do not need to pay back their debts to China. The kids might not know anything better. However, Jimmy Kimmel and ABC’s management are adults. They had a choice not to air this racist program, which promotes racial hatred. The program is totally unacceptable and it must be cut. A sincere apology must be issued. It is extremely distasteful and this is the same rhetoric used in Nazi Germany against Jewish people. Please immediately cut the show and issue a formal apology.

A single quote from a single child was construed by this petitioner as being indicative of Jimmy Kimmel and ABC's inherent racist attitudes and the petition itself achieved full Godwin in less than seven sentences. It also instructed to government to trample the First Amendment by removing Kimmel's show from the air and apologize on its behalf. Lost in the shuffle is the title's request for an investigation, but apparently just killing the show without checking anything out would also be acceptable.

The administration has responded, pointing out that both parties have already apologized and that instructing ABC to remove the show would be a gross misuse of government power. It then invites the 100,000+ troubled petitioners to contact the FCC, presumably because their use of the We the People site shows they don't mind being ignored by government agencies.

This particular petition isn't even that old. It was created on October 19 and its deadline for a response would have been a month later. Less than 90 days from creation to response. That's some sort of land speed record for the Administration of the People, whose approach to open government is long on talk and short on action. And of the limited actions, it's most famous creation is the We the People site, which serves to remind users just how ineffective it is to petition the government directly. If nothing else, lobbyists can point to the ~300-day wait time (and the often-ineffectual, long-delayed responses) as an indication of the worth of their services. Not exactly the sort of message the administration should be sending.

Yeah, but otherwise, what would you do for topic you can handle?

A non-story self-contained anomaly without any wider importance is perfect for Techdirt. It's why the kids keep coming here, they're not challenged to think.Techdirt supposedly has "Insiders" who've paid for that cachet.

Maths Police!

"We the People petitions on the back burner with the average wait for a response currently sitting at 298 days."

This is a misleading statement. 298 days, according to one of your previous articles, is the average response time for unanswered responses. Regardless of how dumb petitions that receive responses are (and there are plenty of dumb ones), you can't accurately say that 298 days is the average response time if you don't include any of the petitions that have actually received responses in calculating that average.

I'm sure there's a way to include petitions that have not yet received responses with those that have received responses when calculating the average (i.e., add the disclaimer "If all unanswered petitions were answered today, the average response time is x days") but you can't really claim that 298 days is the average response time if your dataset doesn't contain a single petition that has received a response...

Re: Maths Police!

I don't think it actually helps. Let's say you want to give a good impression. Reply the useless or non-sensitive petitions blazing fast so you can leave others sitting forever without hurting the average. You can add more stats to account for it and maybe produce some indicator of how effective the whole thing is (ie: index of sensitive petitions that got an answer or something).

So, if the admin responded to a petition with an age of 90 days, and the average are at 298+... Did the administration do this JUST so it could increase the average wait time faster than if it ignored them all?

Re: Re: Maths Police!

I agree completely. Point out average response time by itself doesn't mean much, other than average response time. My issue was just that, if you're going to point it out, at least try to calculate the average resp. time correctly.

And also, I agree with your second point as well. Maybe some other measurement like "bills proposed as a direct response to a petition", or something along those lines would give a better idea of how effective the petition website is.

Does anyone know if any legislation been proposed as a direct result of a whitehouse.gov petition?